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PROCLAMATION 4187-FEB. 6, 1973

[87 STAT.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, RICHARD NIXON, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim the month of February, 1973, as American Heart Month. I invite the Governors of the States, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and officials of other areas subject to the jurisdiction of the United States to issue similar proclamations. I urge the people of the United States to consider fully the nationwide problem of cardiovascular diseases, and to support programs essential to bring about its solution. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this fifth day of February, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred seventy-three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred ninety-seventh.

(^/2jU^^K:y^ PROCLAMATION 4187

National Inventors' Day February 6, 1973

Bj the President of the United States of America

A Proclamation In 1646, the Massachusetts General Court granted an immigrant ironworker named Joseph Jenks the first patent for machinery issued in what was then British North America—a 14 year monopoly on watermills for the "speedy dispatch of much worke with few hands." That was the beginning of what has become a long and proud tradition in this country. '' The creators of our Republic, themselves the inventors of a new form of government, recognized the important role which inventors would play in achieving national progress and, accordingly, gave the Congress the Constitutional authority to grant inventors, for limited times, the exclusive rights to their discoveries. In 1790, Congress did that by establishing the United States Patent System and granting Samuel Hopkins the first patent. History is filled with evidence of the success of this system. The names of Whitney, McCormick, Morse, Bell, and Edison and the cotton gin, the reaper, the telegraph and telephone, the light bulb, the airplane, transistor, television, are familiar examples of American inventiveness.

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